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Gromit Graduates!

We finished up Gromit’s Let’s Go training classes last week. Sadly, there was no fun graduation ceremony with caps and gowns, but that’s probably for the best, since Gromit probably would’ve just tried to eat them. But he did get a certificate! We now have to decide how to best display this great honour.

Here’s Gromit showing off his amazing loose-leash walking ability, which he excels at… as long as you keep luring him with treats.

See how attentive? No wonder he graduated!

This is the best command we learned from the classes, and really the best reason for taking them. When we tell Gromit “Chill”, he lays down calmly in front of us. It made our lives so much better.

See? He even chills when other dogs are around. Such a good boy!

Overall, classes were good, but at times tiring. They’re more for teaching us to be good dog trainers than really teaching Gromit (since he’s only there an hour a week), so it was a lot of work. Work I was happy to do though, as he needs to become a good canine citizen. Besides the chill, we worked heavily on getting our dogs to come on command in emergency situations, which Gromit excelled at in classes and has been improving at in the park. That’s something that could save his life, so I’m really happy that we learned it. It was always a fun exercise to do, because Gromit would freak out when we left him with the trainer to go to the other side of the room. He doesn’t like it when we leave him! Awwwww. Then he’d tear away straight for us when we called him, because he loves us… and the cheese and chicken we were rewarding him with. The trainers were always so impressed because Beagles aren’t naturally all that good at this.

We’re gonna take a break from training for a bit, to try and get him better at walking without pulling and recalling outside. Then we’re gonna look into a tracking course, since that’s what beagles are bred for. He lives to sniff, so we figure we might as well learn how to best harness the power of the beagle. Step two, take over the world.